


In the Gardens

by TheIcyQueen



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Banter, F/M, Fluff, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts, Purple Hawke (Dragon Age), The Winter Palace (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 02:42:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28717467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheIcyQueen/pseuds/TheIcyQueen
Summary: Varric and Hawke slip away to the gardens of the Winter Palace once the Inquisitor saves the day and delivers a bracing speech to the Empress's guests. They're just part of the Inquisition's retinue, after all, so it's not like they have to stand around and shmooze with the fine people of Orlais. They plan to enjoy this newfound brand of peace and quiet to its very fullest...with each other, obviously.
Relationships: Female Hawke/Varric Tethras, Hawke/Varric Tethras
Comments: 11
Kudos: 16
Collections: Hightown Funk 2020





	In the Gardens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [demdoodles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/demdoodles/gifts).



> A Hightown Funk "treat" for demdoodles, because we ALL deserve a little treat now and again, right? ;P
> 
> (Also because, let's be real, everyone who knows me knows I'll be forever bitter that Bioware wouldn't let us take Hawke to the Winter Palace...)

Seeing Hawke like that was strange.

It wasn’t because of the dress, even though he was sure the onlookers behind the gasps and fluttered fans that night probably would’ve thought as much. It made sense, of course—to the Empress’s guests, even to the Inquisition, Hawke was a _Champion_ , a valiant (if not unbelievably foolhardy) hero who belonged in only the finest and spikiest armor Kirkwall had to offer. To them, she was a character cut cleanly from the pages of a storybook, meant to be scuffed and bruised and spattered in a fine spray of blood, so he had to imagine that watching her glide across the marble floors of Halamshiral with her gloves fashionably high and her neckline scandalously low, her shoulders bare but every other curve hugged by rich velveteen and samite…well, that must’ve been something of a surprise for them.

To _him_ , though, Hawke was Hawke. And Hawke, he knew, was nothing short of a chameleon. She’d gotten her start in Kirkwall's underground as a smuggler, after all, and if there was anything a smuggler was expected to excel at (any smuggler worth their salt, at least), it was blending in. Over the years he’d seen her in all manner of outfits and get-ups, ranging from the mundane to the ridiculous, and somehow…almost as though by magic…there hadn’t been a single one she hadn’t seemed perfectly comfortable in. So it wasn’t the dress. If anything, the dress was a comfort, what with its deep reds and blacks and golden accents marking her as a Marcher even this far away from home.

No, no…the strangeness came from something else entirely.

“So,” Varric said breezily as he sat himself down on the bench nestled inside the garden’s alcove, tilting his head upward and narrowing his eyes as though _exceptionally_ intrigued by the flowering vines woven through the terraces above them. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you all night. With all the excitement I guess it got away from me for a while there, but now that we have a moment to ourselves, I really _have_ to know…how’s it feel to spend your evening wearing a mask like an Orles—”

A gloved finger threatened to poke him directly between his eyes, its silverite tip glittering menacingly in the moonlight. “Don’t. You. Dare.”

He managed to stop himself from laughing outright, but there was no restraining his grin. “What? It’s an innocent question, Hawke.”

“If you value our friendship—”

“Hmm…”

“—or your _face_ —”

“Eh.”

“—don’t even _consider_ finishing that sentence.” With a huff clearly meant more for comedic effect than anything else, Hawke joined him on the bench, smoothing her skirt down behind her before sitting. “Here I was, thinking the Inquisitor was surrounding herself with only the _wisest_ and most _sagacious_ of advisors, and yet here _you_ are, spouting off at the mouth to one of Thedas’s most infamous miscreants. Hardly seems wise _or_ sagacious, if you ask me…” She’d plucked the mask from her face the moment they’d stepped out of the Winter Palace, and as they sat she took to idly spinning it by one of its eyeholes. “I can’t believe you’d think to ask me something so…so… _offensive_.”

Ah, there was no stopping his laughter that time. “You can take the mage out of Ferelden,” he sighed, stretching his arms out as best he could given the stiffness of his uniform, “But you can’t take the Ferelden out of the mage, now, can you?”

“Certainly not!” She pressed her free hand (the one not spinning her distressingly expensive mask like a juggler’s plate) to her chest in a pantomime of deep affront before she too gave into her laughter. “You know,” she sighed, readjusting herself on the bench such that she could relax more fully, setting her head against one of his tasseled shoulders, “I had _truly_ hoped tonight wouldn’t turn into a reprise of Château Haine…but here we are all the same, our bits crammed into uncomfortable clothing and our mouths ruined by the taste of despair-ham.” Clucking her tongue, Hawke gave her head a shake, “I think we’re becoming predictable. Could that be? Perhaps it’s a sign of us getting on in years…we’re just _doomed_ to repeat our glory days forever and ever until the Maker sees fit to call us home.”

“And how, pray tell, was tonight a reprise of Château Haine?” He craned his head as best he could to try and meet her gaze, “Were you fighting wyverns in the five minutes we were separated back there? I was _wondering_ what all that racket was…”

She seemed to mull it over for a moment. “Dancing with Seeker Pentaghast was a bit like fighting a wyvern, honestly.” At that, Varric snorted aloud and Hawke couldn’t help but beam. “All the…lunging and the snapping when my hands got too close…”

“No one forced you to dance with her—I’m still not entirely sure _she_ wanted you to dance with her!”

“Oh, come off it,” Hawke said with a dismissive wave, “Of course she did! She’s been all starry-eyed and bushy-tailed since I joined up, and—”

“That’s…okay, that’s not how _I’d_ describe it, but if it’s what _you_ want to believe, then hey, who am I to stop you.” Even through his laughter, he couldn’t say she was _wrong_ ; Cassandra certainly hadn’t turned down Hawke’s offer, that much was true, though how quickly she’d come to regret that decision was anyone’s guess. By the time the song had ended, the Seeker had been a flustered mess, the court had been titillated, and (most importantly) the Inquisitor had been granted enough of a distraction to disappear into the servants' quarters without notice.

It had been, in a word, _delightful_.

And how had it all ended? Well, the day had been saved once more, though not by _them_ …and for the first time in as long as either of them could remember, it was _someone else_ left to pick the pieces up and apologize for the furniture that had been destroyed while they were free to enjoy the rest of the soirée however they pleased. The change was refreshing, to say the very least.

Hawke shifted a bit in her seat, using the opportunity to tuck herself closer against Varric’s side. When his arm found its way around her shoulders, the tips of his fingers brushing absently at the ridge of her collarbone, her smile took on a decidedly self-satisfied curve. “It _was_ Château Haine all over again, though…maybe you weren’t paying attention.” It was her turn to crane _her_ head back to meet his eyes. “Orlesians being Orlesian…playing their ridiculous Game and laughing when we don’t know the rules, the servants whispering about the subterfuge and sabotage going on behind the scenes juuust loudly enough to be overheard…only this time, _you’re_ the one wearing something ugly enough to border on being morally reprehensible!”

“Ha ha ha. What biting wit the Champion has. You be careful who you say shit like that in front of, Hawke—Ruffles might look all prim and proper, but I have the sneaking suspicion she’d consider those fighting words, and you _know_ how much Antivans enjoy dueling.”

Their chuckling gave way to a contented, tired silence after a beat, nothing but the chirping of nighttime insects and the muted sound of music from the ballroom floating on the air. There was something to be said for that kind of quiet, that sense of exhausted peace. He hadn’t much cared for the opulence of the Winter Palace, but sitting there in the stillness of the night, Varric thought he could appreciate the gardens. The scent of flowers did wonders to mask the stench of the blood that had been spilled during the night if nothing else, and as someone who’d lived his entire life in Kirkwall, he knew the importance of a good death-covering smell.

“I missed this.” Hawke sighed it more than she said it, and something in her voice made him turn again. She looked up at him when he did, her eyes jewel-bright behind the mask that she’d apparently slipped back on at some point during his woolgathering.

“Missed what?” Varric joked, “The chaos? The shouting?”

“Oh yes. You know me, I’m never comfortable unless someone is furiously shrieking my name and waving a cudgel in my general direction.” Hawke nudged him with a smile and then angled herself so she could creep her fingers along the length of his uniform’s sash. “Mostly, though, I meant…” she paused walking her hand up and down his sash just long enough to gesture between the two of them. “This. You. _Us_ …pfft, you know what I mean,” she laughed, and a moment later a bird answered from a nearby tree. “You’re the one who has a way with words, _I_ only know how to make people explode with magic, so—”

He leaned in and kissed her before she could say anything else. Her lips were soft against his as she smiled into the kiss, familiar and welcoming and everything he’d been missing since that horrible morning she’d left Kirkwall before the sun had fully risen. The hand that had been tracing the bare skin of her shoulder moved upwards to gingerly tip her chin up…and then flicked her mask off once more, sending it clattering to the garden floor with a sound rendered perfectly unimportant by the soft laugh Hawke breathed out.

When the kiss ended (much too soon, in his humble opinion), they didn’t exactly break apart; he set his forehead against hers as his hand moved to cradle the back of her head, and there they simply remained for a moment, basking in the petal-sweet air of the Empress’s garden as countless lovers had no doubt basked before them.

“I missed it too.” Varric spoke as though worried he might interrupt the crickets chirping around them, his voice low enough to almost be mistaken for a breath. “This. You. _Us_ ,” he smiled, reaching with his other hand to bring hers to his mouth, punctuating each word with a brief kiss to her knuckles. “More than you know, Hawke.”

She hummed a little sound that somehow managed express both doubt and delight before leaning up to kiss him again. “‘More than you know,’ he says,” she joked after, speaking so her lips brushed his, “Talking like _he’s_ the one who had to be dragged away from _her_ …”

“Maybe he wasn’t _dragged_ , but he’s sure had to put up with a lot of new and exciting idiots and a lot of new and exciting world-ending disasters without her,” he chuckled, “So maybe—just maybe—we cut him a little slack with his word choice, huh?”

Hawke heaved a sigh so dramatic that it was almost comical. “Only because you’re handsome,” she teased, tipping her head up to press her lips to the bridge of his nose before resuming her earlier slouch on the bench. “I—” Whatever she’d meant to say next was lost as the music from the palace suddenly swelled, still muffled and cottony with distance, but more than loud enough for them to hear it. “Oho! It seems the evening’s festivities have taken yet another turn!” She sat up straighter, beaming that wide, beautiful smile of hers as she made a grand show of holding her hand out to him. “Master Tethras,” she said in her best-worst Orlesian accent (the one that always managed to sound very much like Hubert), “Might I have zis dance?”

He took one look at her offered hand, the silverite tips of her gloves again glittering the light of the moon, then flicked his eyes up to hers, the memory of her dancing with Cassandra still fresh in his mind. His answer was a simple, flat, “Absolutely not.”

“Oh thank the _Maker!_ ” Hawke said, her words coming out in a rush of a relieved sigh. She dropped her hand back down, using the leverage to lift her legs up onto the bench. “I was hoping you’d say that…honestly, I don’t know what I would’ve done if you’d taken me up on it—my feet are _killing_ me…” Without a shred of decorum, she draped her legs over his, crossing one ankle over the other so she could better gesture at the uneven soles of her boots. “Did you see one of my heels snapped off earlier? I’ve been forced to waddle ever since! _Waddle_ , Varric. I shudder to think of how sore I’ll be tomorrow.”

“Well, how about this,” he laughed, his hands resting themselves on her legs, “As soon as this farce is over and we’re all safe and sound in whatever room they see fit to throw us in…” Slowly, playfully, he walked his fingers along her leg as she’d done with his sash before. “I’ll help you out of your dress…”

“Ooh, how chivalrous!”

“…you can put something more comfortable on…”

“You know, now that you’re saying that, Varric, I’m not entirely sure I packed anything other than this dress. Hmm. A quandary.”

“…and then, since I’m so grateful you came along to help like this, I will _gladly_ massage away _any_ of your aches, Hawke.”

Her smirk was sharp as a sickle as she threw her head back and laughed, and again, Varric found himself thinking that seeing Hawke like that was strange. It wasn’t the dress, nor was it the mask on the ground, but it was strange nonetheless, and it was wonderful. Because somehow, in some way, seeing her like that made him realize that though they were very, very far from Kirkwall there in the gardens of the Winter Palace, it was the closest to home he had felt in quite some time.


End file.
